Two prescriptions, one exam, and a flu shot. Total out-of-pocket? $39, approximately. Not bad. Not bad at all.

So remember, those of you who are in favor of dismantling Obamacare/the ACA; it provides for things like this for people who otherwise couldn’t afford it. I’m lucky in that my employer provides full medical/dental/vision, and they pay all the premiums. Not everyone else is at fortunate.

This saddens me. While some of the stories have been absolute garbage (including one of the worst stories ever in the series’ history), I did always like Capaldi as the Doctor, especially during season nine, where he sort of settled down into the “ageing rock star” kind of character rather than the grumpy old man.

I had really hoped he’d stick around for the new showrunner, Chris Chibnal, to take a stab at the character. It would have been interesting to see what could have been done. But the ratings have been down, and I’m sure Chibnal wanted to bring in new blood, so there you go.

On the plus side, this frees up the character, and the actor, to come be a part of Big Finish. Hopefully that’ll happen sooner rather than later, but as long as it happens at all, I’ll be damn happy.

Meantime, let the speculation begin as to who will be the next Doctor. I’ll tell you this: it probably won’t be a white male, and my personal preferences would be either Idris Elba, Alexander Siddig or Helen Mirren, if she’s still interested.

PROBLEM: Certain people in the “Muslim world” believe that non-Muslims, mostly those in Europe and the United States, are at war with Islam. They respond to this with terror attacks.

SOLUTION: Not what Trump has done.

Our Dear Leader has signed an executive order that bars all people from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia or Yemen from entering the United States for 30 days and suspends the US Refugee Admissions Program for 120 days.

So that’s fantastic. It’s a bad, stupid idea, and one that’s already causing chaos. It’s also a lot more useless than you’d expect. Why? Notice who isn’t on that list. Can you see it? Take a guess. If you still can’t figure it out, do you remember what country most of the 9/11 hijackers came from?

Saudi Arabia.

Also not on the list, Russia. The idiots who attacked the Boston Marathon came from there.

Surprisingly, I don’t see Afghanistan or Pakistan on there, either, despite the fact that both of those countries have a great deal of problems with terrorism.

Notably the countries that are on the list are all ones where (this is going to be an awkwardly-worded sentence), no one from them living in the USA has engaged in any terrorist attacks here since 1975.

Further, I can only assume people who believe that terrorists are flooding into our country disguised as refugees are really, really ignorant. Can you imagine spending two or three years in a refugee camp, going through all the rather time-consuming vetting, and then finally getting over to wreak havoc on in the west? Wouldn’t it make more sense to just get yourself a passport, and a visa, and an airline ticket? Visitors from all over the world arrive in this country every day. If you want to come over and be a terrorists, that’s the way to do it.

But of course, this has nothing to do with actual reality. It has to do with Trump’s stupid, paranoid version of reality, in which the United States is a weak and vulnerable nation, subject to all sorts of abuses from everyone in the world. He’s basically a fucktard, and if you think this is a good idea, you are, too.

Yes, Sir John Hurt, legendary British actor, has died at the age of 77.

Hurt was born in England in 1940. He began acting as a young boy, and started working his way up. He began appearing in films starting in 1962, and went on to star in a great many. Some were great, like Alien, and some were King Ralph.

To me, of course, his most important role was in Doctor Who, where he turned up as the mysterious War Doctor, a role he basically owned from his first few seconds on screen. He went on to reprise that role in a series of four audio stories by Big Finish.

Up to this point, the Doctor actors had all died in order. Hartnell, Troughton, Pertwee. It was inevitable that wouldn’t last forever. It’s just sad that the pattern broke so soon.

All of you who lean left, but bought into the lies told about Hillary. Apologize.

All of you who thought Hillary wasn’t sufficiently liberal, so you voted for Stein. Apologize.

All of you apathetic losers who didn’t bother to vote. Apologize.

All of you who didn’t do everything you could to prevent Trump from coming to power, apologize.

Because you voted poorly, Donald Trump is the president. If you are at all unhappy at everything hes done, and you voted for anyone other than Hillary, or didn’t vote at all when you were able to, then you owe everyone an apology.

And until you offer that apology, your complaints have no meaning. Until you show that you learned you did wrong, all your posts on Facebook about the women’s march, and the restrictions on federal agencies talking about climate change, and all your comments about Nazis, and how Hitler rose to power, all of that has no meaning. None at all. Not until you accept responsibility for failing to do your part.

You can start in the comments. Then continue in person. Spend the next several years expressing your regret and admitting what you did wrong, and then maybe you’ll learn your lesson and remember this when next it comes time to vote.

Is it ever acceptable to inflict physical violence on someone for voicing a political opinion? If someone, for example, says that gays shouldn’t be allowed to get married, or that women should be denied access to abortions, is it ok to punch them in the face? What if it’s someone who says they’re against allowing Muslims into the USA? Punch them? Suppose it’s someone who says prayer should be mandatory in schools? Should they be assaulted for what they believe?

What if it’s a Nazi?

There was an incident recently where someone who identified as a Nazi was going on about all sorts of things, mostly against black people. Someone then punched him in the face. Many on the left cheered this. Probably so did many in the center and on the right. I mean, the guy’s a Nazi, right? So punch away.

But that’s not right. That’s not moral. That’s not how America works.

If you accept that it’s ok to punch a Nazi for nothing but the words he is saying, then you’re saying that it’s sometimes ok to physically hurt people for their beliefs and their words. This is like saying it’s ok for child molesters to get raped in prison; it doesn’t make you anti-child molester, it just makes you pro-rape.

Further, this also means that if you think it’s acceptable for someone to punch a Nazi for what he’s saying, then you’re also saying it’s ok for someone to punch you for what you’re saying. As soon as you make it acceptable to hit someone for what they believe, you make it acceptable for everyone to hit everyone else for anything they believe.

So it is here. If you’re ok with this guy getting hurt for talking, then you’re not anti-Nazi, you’re pro-violence. You’re in favor of suppressing speech, and supporting censorship. You are, in fact, advocating a fascist viewpoint.

This is very important to understand. If someone is simply standing there talking, and espousing viewpoints you don’t agree with, you do not have the right-morally, ethically, or legally-to physically attack them. You do have the right to disagree with them. You can engage them. You can debate them. You can discuss their beliefs and yours. You can even walk away and ignore them. But you cannot hit them.

To paraphrase what Voltaire never said, but is credited with doing so, I would fight to the death for any Nazi’s right to stand there and talk about how blacks are inferior and Jews and gays should be rounded up and killed. If you don’t see why that’s important, you really just don’t understand freedom of speech. It exists to protect the speech we dislike, not the speech we love, and it saddens me that this most very basic of concepts is something that so many people seem to have trouble digesting.